Untitled II

Psychiatrist is upping my primary antidepressant dosage. Hopefully it won't affect my sleep cycle like it did when I started. Doesn't think it will.

I figure it'll take a few weeks to feel much difference - if there is any. It's not like the previous three I've tried have made me "better." That's when I'll be seeing my girlfriend next - she's visiting one more time toward the end of October. After that, I figure I should take my life if I still haven't found things different.

In the meantime, I still have to keep trying to improve. The math doesn't work if I don't really take reasonable measures to make life worth living. So that's keeping up with my medication, keeping busy, getting exercise, doing bullshit therapy, "mindfulness," keeping up with the bullshit workbook, "desensitization therapy" (also known as "get off your fucking ass and face your anxiety, pussy, and it will get better." But "desensitization therapy" is what my psychiatrist says, because he's getting paid to do so, and if he starts using phrases like "fucking ass" most patients would stop paying him. But I know what he really means. Pigfucker.)

Tomorrow should be the last truly hot day of the year. The air in the house is cool right now, so it won't be a big deal, but I'll be happy when cool weather comes to stay.

I read The Stranger by Albert Camus. I found it really interesting, but if I didn't find the philosophical/psychological aspects of the book resonant, I probably would've thought it was inane, boring bullshit. It's a quick read, go for it. If you read this swill you'd find The Stranger worth your time.

Not like anyone reads this swill. I started it as a-private-journal-meets-a-private-joke. (Yes, my use of hyphenation has gotten out of hand from reading Nietszche. Sometimes there's just no good way to translate those German gestalt-words.)

The irony of publishing private words for anyone in the world to access at no cost - with zero people actually doing so - is not lost on me. It makes me laugh.

But it doesn't stop me from checking the blog statistics before each post.


Monday the 30th of September, 2019

Pain: 60
Struggle: 40
Success: 20

Again

I had a panic attack yesterday.
Again.
I think.
Probably not a full one, not like my other two. There was a physical collapse, an inability to stand, a reduction to sobbing, but I regained control of my breathing much more quickly. No additional shaking or weariness today. (I mean, on top of my chronic weariness and hand-tremor. For what that's worth.)

It occurred in the wake of a disruptive set of young guests of my parents arriving unexpectedly. I found myself trapped in the downstairs den, unable to reach food or the bathroom without exposing myself to (gasp!) social realities. It seems ludicrous in hindsight, even to me, but my fear and desperation at the time was real. I managed to avoid self-harm yet again, despite extended contemplation and search for means.

I think about joining a monastery, haha. Alas, I cannot any longer claim Christian faith. Maybe I should research any secular/open alternatives...

Today's tune brought to you by Bell Witch. A bit outside my normal smorgasbord, but once I understood what was going on in Mirror Reaper, I was blown away. Yeah, it's slow and weird, but if you stick with it and let the music carry you, it will bring you to heights of despair and glimmers of hope by the end. (I realize "heights of despair" may not be what a lot of people want out of music, haha, but to me such a journey is special.)


Sunday the 29th of September, 2019

Pain: 15
Struggle: 10
Success: 55

The Math

I cleared more brush from the back of my parents' house today. I sweated a fair bit despite the pedestrian work, I think a few mosquitoes got me, and I may have been sunburnt despite the late season. Tomorrow I will wake up with a sore back, too. Twenty-five doesn't seem like old age, but it's starting to feel like it.

Look at me, a litany of complaints.

I moved back in with my parents because, while living in Pittsburgh with my girlfriend, I wasn't getting mental help. There always seemed to be a reason not to, and I was frankly afraid. But, things came to a head, and I convinced myself that I needed to try it before ending my life. If I try it and it doesn't work, no big deal, it's a few extra months of lived pain. If I try it and it does work - that is, I get to a place where life is more good than bad - I add decades of worthwhile living. Even if I believe it to be unlikely to work, the math says "treatment" is worth trying.

So I am. And I have been. No substantive difference yet, but there's still a few things my psychiatrist wants to explore. I've got time, for now.

I am living with my parents because 1) I get cheap mental health treatment from my father's employer in-state, and 2) I'll be damned if I spend my last few months slaving away in a fucking grocery store like I was. There'll be time to figure out my future if I can get my present made into something alright.

I'm still ashamed about it.

Some pre-modern Armenian folk for you today, courtesy of Hespèrion XXI, because by about halfway through I actually felt okay. I should take what I can get, I guess.


Friday the 27th of September, 2019

Pain: 40
Struggle: 20
Success: 60

I Will Not Be a Pair of Hands

It is all so crushing. Employed for what? For what? To have the "privilege" of food and warmth? To waste the rest on colors and toys? I will not stand for this feebleness. I will not be a pair of hands. Take your "social contract" and choke on it. I will die on my own terms if I cannot live on them.

Depression Cooking

After over two years of living with major depressive disorder, my culinary inclinations have definitely tended toward simple, one-dish meals, cheap and prepared with minimal effort. It's been necessary, I guess. Shoestring budget, plus crushing weariness that is as much mental as physical.

So, today I skilleted onions and sliced hotdogs, and added canned beans and spices once cooked. Warm through and top with shredded cheese and serve with toast and - presto! It's cheap as shit, and real filling. Not exactly healthy - hotdogs have high salt and fat content, not to mention whatever preservatives - but if you swap out the hotdogs for a vegetable (carrots? cabbage? eggplant?) it would be.

I guess I should try that too, sometime. I should add salsa, too, if available. I guess it's never quite the same, as I'm always improvising what I make - I don't really do recipes. (I guess that's part of why I avoid baking...)

Today I found Z6b3r's debut album on Lazerdiscs Records. Yeah, synthwave. I don't just listen to gloom and doom, though you might be forgiven for thinking so, based on what ends up embedded at the beginning of each of these posts. It's just what fits each day.


Wednesday the 25th of September, 2019

Pain: 40
Struggle: 30
Success: 45

Simulacra

I'm part of a regular tabletop RPG game group. I started running games early in college, and have usually been the game master (GM) / "dungeon master" (DM) - an older term - ever since, though the members of the group itself change with time and circumstance. Most campaigns (sets of game sessions with a common story arc) have used the current (5th) edition of Dungeons & Dragons, though I've tinkered with custom rulesets since I began.

For the past several months I've had the pleasure of being a regular player, rather than the DM, as one of my friends picked up a campaign he started in college but never finished. We play via Discord voice chat. Five people, each living in a different city, playing a cooperative game together each week, watching their characters learn and grow. I suppose it is a special thing. (If you ever get the chance to play Dungeons & Dragons or the like, go for it.)

Well, the DM and one of the players (brought in after college, as they were dating) just got married on Sunday, so that campaign will be going on hiatus again as they figure out life together. There should be time after the honeymoon and the last of the moving for them to at least be players, though, so I offered to run something until we are ready to finish that game up. (It's been on hiatus before, haha, so I'm fairly confident it'll come back once more.)

An impromptu poll indicated that a science fiction game would be exciting.

I haven't run a sci-fi campaign before, but I've wanted to try for quite a while, and I have some ideas. I'm not sure if I will used a free published system, or just bang one of my homebrew rulesets into shape.

I need to do a lot of research, though. Both for ideas, and simple knowledge, so I can fulfill the DM's main job in an adventure game: adjudicate player actions. I need context, and a solid understanding of how the elements of play interact.

So, alongside hours of Wikipedia research, I'm spending some of my ample free time reading sci-fi. Some Poul Anderson, so far, with The Martian ongoing and Huxley's Brave New World up next. Thankfully my middle school years were just as nerdy (more so?) than my current ones, so I blazed through a ton of Star Wars and Star Trek novels back in the day. Other books lending influence to my thoughts (not all sci-fi): Blindsight (Watts), Foucault's Pendulum (Eco), Dune (Herbert), Simulacra and Simulation (Baudrillard), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Verne), Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Nietzsche), Asimov.

I'm aiming for a hard sci-fi direction, though. No lightsabers or teleporters. Fairly dark and nihilistic, too (as much as a group of jovial friends having fun together allows, haha).

Blindsight by Peter Watts sticks in my mind as the most important inspiration of anything I've read. I recommend it highly, if you want something thoughtful, philosophical, but still a speculative fiction novel. Very highly.

Musical influences to a sci-fi campaign would be too many to list. Maybe I'll make a playlist sometime. For today, I leave you with Oh Hiroshima's latest, "Oscillation," because I listened to it for the first time today while writing this. Suitable for lulling you to sleep in the cramped quarters that protect you from the endless interstellar vacuum, where there can be no sound.


Tuesday the 24th of September, 2019

Pain: 30
Struggle: 40
Success: 70

Loyalty, Hope

I'm starting to get sick of these.

Missed yesterday because my girlfriend was over. We attended a mutual friend's wedding. Not much to say about that, except that I hope they do well. Probably will, though I don't know how anyone can go on for any length of time given all the bullshit around us.

Fuck, I need to start these posts earlier in the day. Bedtime. Hopefully dreamless.

Olhava, who I only heard of today, have (again, today) released a jaw-dropping self-titled debut album. Stream it, pay what you want for it, tell them what a fantastic pleasure it was to listen to. (...Not like any reader - of which, I believe, this blog has none - is likely to enjoy atmospheric black metal. But, try it out.)


Monday the 23rd of September, 2019

Pain: 20
Struggle: 20
Success: 35

Untitled I

When I sat down to begin yet another post, I saw a small insectile shape sitting nearby on the desk. The legs and poor, shadowy lighting made me think it was a spider, at first. (I have a mild phobia of spiders.) More light revealed it was a yellowjacket wasp.

My parents had an infestation of them up under the eaves this summer, where some siding had come loose and the wasps could build a nest in the wall. They'd been buzzing around the gardens ad nauseam, and many were found dead in various rooms on that side of the house, where they had gotten in via windowframes. No stings, though; they aren't aggressive, they just get riled if you threaten their nest or attack them. Exterminators had come for them earlier this month, and the nights have been getting colder, so I have been seeing fewer.

This one was perching, awkwardly, on a sheaf of envelopes. It was clinging, tired. Its back feet trembled, its abdomen occasionally pulsed. I wonder if it was dying, without its hive. Or maybe, it had just gotten lost in the house, and couldn't find food enough to keep going.

We think of them as pests, and I suppose they can be. The stark yellow and black, brazen buzzing, signalling they are not to be trifled with. But, look closely at one that is still (they are not often still). It was shapely, in a way, curves and points flowing end to end. It had a fine fuzz jacket on its torso. There was a kind of humble beauty, despite the zany colors and angles.

I saw a tired, helpless creature, struggling to go on. Separated from its family, its society. Lost, in need. Perhaps dying already.

I crushed it. Not out of fear or desperation; indeed, I gave it more than a minute's thought. (A silly thing, perhaps.) I suspect that its queen is dead and its hive is scattered, and the cold nights of autumn are already coming. Death would be slow. I made it quick, a few layers of toilet paper to insulate me from a sting it was likely unable to even deliver. I like to think I did what was best for that poor individual, but I am saddened anyway. It is a hard world for wasps, and for us. A quick and painless obliteration may often be the best we can hope for.


Saturday the 21st of September, 2019

Pain: 35
Struggle: 20
Success: 60

It All Falls Apart

My girlfriend texted me today about some plans this weekend. Almost in passing, she described in just a few sentences how she imagined our life could be in the coming years. What she said was sweet and heartfelt, and ended with: "It will be a life. And a darn good one at that."

She knows my struggles - I am open with her - and she knows that I believe life to be not worth the living. She knows I am trying to see if I can improve, see if I am wrong. Somehow, she still has hope. But, I don't think I can be that hope for her. I do not think it will be much longer until I end my life. I just wish she would find someone better for her than I am. It tears at me to think of hurting her - of betraying her? - by leaving in death, but what am I to do?

Will she understand? Will she be okay?


Friday the 20th of September, 2019

10AM
Reading a text message (see above)
Emptiness, guilt, apprehension
See above

Pain: 25
Struggle: 15
Success: 55

Cope, Cope, Cope

The bullshit workbook is having me learn "mindfulness" exercises. I can execute them - my devoutly Christian background gave me similar experiences in prayer - and they are able to divert my attention and emotions from cycling negative thoughts. It still feels like a form of avoidance, or hiding. Taoism, Buddhism, Stoicism, Epicureanism, are all religio-philosophical systems that sprang up in times of upendedness and confusion in their respective settings, and it shows. Avoidance. Detachment. Disillusionment. Disengagement. Cope, cope, cope. I don't want to just cope.

My parents have two cats. Their number has fluctuated since the two our family got initially, when I was young. Strays turn up in blizzards, but get hit by cars years later. So it goes.

One is fat. Very fat. It's probably not her fault; we feed her the same amount as the other cat - but this fat cat was adopted as a scrawny worm-ridden runt kitten from a barn. Her whole metabolism and liver function probably had to do all they could to preserve her before and after her birth. Once we took care of the tapeworm infestation and weaned her, she quickly ballooned. First world problems, I guess. She is over a decade old now, and her joints clearly hurt her after so long hauling a bulk. No teeth. Quacks, rather than a proper "meow." Can't climb the stairs some days, but she still asks to be carried up to sleep in my parents' quiet bedroom each morning. She's real sweet when she's sleepy, but can be a testy rotter at other times. Sharp claws.

The other is a small, half-siamese. Biggest eyes in a cat I've seen, ice-blue. She says her name when she vocalizes: "Bree." We didn't name her, but we see where the name comes from. She is the oldest, one of the original two. Lasted so long because she's scared of her own shadow. Very sweet, though - despite taking several years to be brave enough to sleep on a lap. Now, she is always asking, especially during the winter. She had a beautiful coat, but gradually developed pathological grooming, licking bare and bloody patches. It seems every year she has a new area to add to the repertoire. I can sympathize. I'd be harming myself too, if I don't talk myself out of it.

At the top I embedded "Ghost Shirt Society" by Antethic. I don't know what the album name means, but it doesn't much matter, as it's wordless post-rock. On my first listen it didn't really stick, but I kept it in the backlog. Subsequent listens have been much better. I like that it has a sense of progression and thought without seeming either joyous or melancholy. Pick it up, you can pay what you think it's worth to them on Bandcamp. I feel bad that I paid $0, but I tell myself that it's fine because I'm unemployed. It doesn't really help.


Thursday the 19th of September, 2019

6PM
Explaining to my parents what the firebombing of Dresden meant
Hollowness, despair
How can we live as if all is somehow well?

Pain: 20
Struggle: 10
Success: 40